Category: archival research

A beginner’s guide to conducting archival research

Archives preserve records from what has gone before to ensure accountability among leaders, to record what has happened in the past, and to preserve people's cultural identities and heritage. In our book Exploring the archives: A beginner’s guide for qualitative researchers (2021), Kathleen deMarrais and I introduce qualitative researchers to archival research. We discuss why … Continue reading A beginner’s guide to conducting archival research

Wayward lives, beautiful experiments

One of the challenges for researchers working with archival records is how to report research findings while acknowledging that records are always incomplete and fragmentary. Even today, when we have access to digitized documents, born-digital records and warehouses all over the world providing cloud storage space, only a small fraction of materials are preserved for … Continue reading Wayward lives, beautiful experiments

The lost education of Horace Tate

Educational historian Vanessa Siddle Walker's (2018) book The lost education of Horace Tate: Uncovering the hidden heroes who fought for justice in schools, details Horace Tate's contribution to the fight for educational opportunities for black children in the Southern United States. Horace Tate (1922-2002) served for 16 years in the Georgia State Senate, and his … Continue reading The lost education of Horace Tate

Researching radical practices through feminist genealogies

The 15th August marks the date 188 years ago when the first feminist newspaper was published in Paris, France in 1832 under the title, La Femme Libre. Over the course of 31 issues under different editorships, the title and sub-titles changed several times (Tamboukou, 2016). In her monograph, Sewing, fighting and writing: Radical practices in … Continue reading Researching radical practices through feminist genealogies

Understanding the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee

Several times in the last couple of weeks, I've come across articles discussing the legacy of the Public Health Service's study of untreated syphilis in Alabama in relation to COVID-19 and the high mortality rate among African American communities in the U.S. Along with my students, I've recently finished re-reading Susan Reverby's (2009) book on … Continue reading Understanding the U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee